Milestones

DENIED. Final appeal by Shoko Asahara, 51, messianic leader of the Aum Shinrikyo cult, of a 2004 death sentence for masterminding the 1995 sarin-gas attack on Tokyo’s subway that killed 12 people and injured 5,000; by Japan’s Supreme Court; in Tokyo. His appeals exhausted, Asahara faces death by hanging, although no date has been set for his execution.

RESIGNED. Major General Udi Adam, 47, head of the Israeli Defense Forces’ northern command, which spearheaded last month’s conflict with Hizballah militants in Lebanon; in protest over how the fighting was managed; in Biranit, Israel. Adam, who reportedly clashed over tactics with his superior, army chief of staff Lieut. General Dan Halutz, is the first senior Israeli official to step down amid mounting domestic criticism of the Lebanon offensive.

STEPPING DOWN. Heizo Takenaka, 55, finance minister from 2001-2005 credited with helping engineer Japan’s economic revival; in Tokyo. His controversial reforms halved Japanese banks’ non-performing loans, saving many from collapse, and helped initiate the privatization of Japan’s gigantic postal savings system. Currently Internal Affairs Minister, he has said he will retire when Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s term ends on Sept. 26.

KILLED. Andrei Kozlov, 41, who, as the first deputy chief of Russia’s central bank, worked to reform the country’s fast-expanding, long-corrupt financial sector—along the way angering “pocket banks” largely controlled by oligarchs; shot by two gunmen outside a soccer arena; in Moscow. In an effort to make the chaotic industry safer, Kozlov cracked down on money laundering, closed shady banks and lobbied to consolidate the nation’s 1,200 financial institutions.

DIED. Oriana Fallaci, 77, fearsome, glamorous Italian journalist renowned during the 1960s and ’70s for her war reporting and aggressive interviews with world leaders like Yasser Arafat, Golda Meir and Ayatullah Khomeini, whom she famously asked, “How do you swim in a chador?”; in Florence. Of her passion for covering combat, Fallaci said, “Nothing reveals man the way war does.” In recent years, she drew accusations of racism for referring to an “Islamic invasion” of Europe.

DIED. Joachim Fest, 79, German author of the psychologically incisive, globally acclaimed 1973 work Hitler; in Kronberg-im-Taunus, Germany. Fest shed light on the Third Reich by examining its leadership in dispassionate, vivid detail. He attributed Hitler’s rise not primarily to economics, as many German historians have, but to the abdication of moral responsibility by educated Germans.

DIED. Taufa’ahau Tupou IV, 88, King of Tonga, a group of 169 Polynesian islands, for 41 years; of heart disease; in Auckland, New Zealand. A mostly benign ruler of the only remaining monarchy in the South Pacific, he opposed political reforms and restricted the press but also introduced Tonga’s first dictionary, newspaper and television station. He is succeeded by his British-educated businessman son, Crown Prince Tupouto.

DIED. Hilda Bernstein, 91, white, middle-class illustrator turned antiapartheid activist and founding member of the multiracial Federation of South African Women; in Cape Town, South Africa. Bernstein and her husband Rusty, who was tried for treason alongside friend Nelson Mandela and acquitted, fled police harassment in 1964, settling in Britain. She returned only after Mandela became South Africa’s first democratically elected President. “The meaning of life,” she said, “is a choice you make about the way you live.”

Numbers
30% Percentage of young Indians in a recent survey who chose Mahatma Gandhi as their favorite role model
37% Percentage who chose Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates

$12 million Amount the Democratic National Committee said it plans to spend on the U.S. midterm elections in November
$60 million Amount the Republican National Committee said it will spend

92% Percentage of Americans who say they believe in God or some higher power
75% Percentage who believe their family will get into heaven
19% Percentage who believe that God favors the U.S. in world affairs

43 million Number of children in the world deprived of a primary school education because of war and conflict, according to a new report
89% Percentage of primary-age children not in school in war-torn Somalia, the highest proportion in the world

$27,646 Average salary of working men in the U.S. who drink alcohol, 10% higher than that of those who don’t drink, according to a new study
$14,304 Average salary of working women in the U.S. who drink, 14% higher than that of abstainers